They may not look very pretty but a stricken horseshoe crab melted the heart of a passer-by recently who took it upon himself to give the alien-like creature a second chance at life. <br /><br />Enrico Pescantini was strolling down the beach on Holbox Island in Mexico when he spotted the struggling arthropod.<br /><br />Somehow, the endangered creature had flipped onto its back and had no obvious way of righting itself.<br /><br />Pescantini turned it the right way up and the crab crawled back into the ocean to see out its days.<br /><br />Although they resemble crustaceans, horseshoe crabs actually belong to a separate group of arthropods, Chelicerata, and are closely related to arachnids.<br /><br />They originated 450 million years ago and are sometimes described as "living fossils."
